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PREPARING EFFECTIVE ESSAY QUESTIONS

A Self-directed Workbook for Educators

by

Christian M. Reiner

Timothy W. Bothell

Richard R. Sudwe

e ks

Bud Wood

Copyright © 2002 New Forums Press

Preface

Although essay questions are one of the most commonly used methods for assessing student learning, many are poorly designed and ineffectively used. Writing effective essay questions requires training and practice. There are subtle characteristics of effective essay questions that are often difficult to discern for those without adequate training. This workbook was developed to provide training and practice in discerning the often difficult to see characteristics of effective essay questions and to support educators in the development and use of essay questions. This workbook supports educators from all schools and disciplines. In addition, it supports teaching assistants who work with educators and often have exam development and grading responsibilities. This workbook is the first in a series of three workbooks designed to improve the development and use of effective essay questions. It focuses on the writing and use of essay questions. The second booklet in the series focuses on scoring student responses to essay questions. The third workbook focuses on preparing students to respond to essay questions and can be used with both educators and students. To support educators, this workbook is divided into sections answering the following three questions:

1. What is an essay question?

2. When should essay questions be used?

3. How should essay questions be constructed?

The format of this workbook is suitable for use with seminars or workshops and can be facilitated by an instructor. However, it is primarily designed to be studied alone as a self- directed learning tool. Each section contains assessments, practice exercises and review activities that will foster understanding and improve writing and use of effective essay questions. Each exercise includes feedback for users to check their progress and understanding. To maximize learning with this workbook, the authors recommend that users follow the order of material sequentially.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

Booklet Objectives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Section 1: What is an Essay Question? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Definition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Advantages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Limitations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Common Misconceptions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 Section 2: When Should Essay Questions be Used?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Section 3: How Should Essay Questions be Constructed?. . . . . . . . . . . . 22 Checklist for Reviewing Essay Questions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39

Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40

Appendix A - Answers to Review Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 Appendix B - Directive Verb Definitions and Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .47 Appendix C - Bloom's Cognitive Process Dimensions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 4

Introduction

When was the last time you used an essay question to assess student performance? Why did you choose an essay item over other forms of assessment? How comfortable did you feel with developing the essay item and scoring student responses? The answers to these questions vary from educator to educator. Educators choose essay questions over other forms of assessment because essay items challenge students to create a response rather than to simply select a response. Some educators use them because essays have the potential to reveal students' abilities to reason, create, analyze, synthesize, and evaluate. In short, essay items are used for the advantages they offer. Despite the advantages associated with essay questions, there are also disadvantages. Have you ever labored over the wording of an essay question in an effort to make it clear and precise so that the students know exactly what you expect of them? Or have you ever felt the frustration of trying to develop reliable and fair scoring criteria for grading students' responses to essay questions only to discover that you were as unsure of what was asked for in the essay question as the students? These are some of the difficulties of essay questions. This workbook addresses the advantages and disadvantages of essay questions and illustrates ways of improving the use of essay questions. There are two major purposes for using essay questions. One purpose is to assess students' understanding of and ability to think with subject matter content. The other purpose is to assess students' writing abilities. These two purposes are so different in nature that it is best to treat them separately. This workbook will focus on essay questions that assess students' thinking skills. When going through this workbook it is important to keep this focus in mind and to understand that some of the rules and principles discussed may even contradict rules and principles that apply for essay questions that assess students' writing skills. 5

Workbook Objectives

Specifically, the workbook is designed to support educators in:

1. Understanding the main advantages and limitations of essay questions and common

misconceptions associated with their use.

2. Distinguishing between learning outcomes that are appropriately assessed by using

essay questions and outcomes that are likely to be better assessed by other means.

3. Evaluating existing essay questions using criteria of effective essay questions.

4. Improving poorly written essay questions by using the criteria for effective essay

questions to identify flaws in existing questions and correct them.

5. Constructing well-written essay questions that assess given objectives.

WHAT IS AN ESSAY QUESTION?

6

Section 1:

What is an Essay Question?

There are few definitions for what constitutes an essay question. Of those definitions that can be found, a definition given a long time ago by John M. Stalnaker (1951, p.495) appears to be the most helpful. "A test item which requires a response composed by the examinee, usually in the form of one or more sentences, of a nature that no single response or pattern of responses can be listed as correct, and the accuracy and quality of which can be judged subjectively only by one skilled or informed in the subject." Based on Stalnaker's definition, an essay question should meet the following criteria:

1. Requires examinees to compose rather than select their response.

2. Elicits student responses that must consist of more than one sentence.

3. Allows different or original responses or pattern of responses.

4. Requires subjective judgment by a competent specialist

to judge the accuracy and quality of responses. Multiple-choice questions, matching exercises, and true-false items are all examples of selected response test items because they require students to choose an answer from a list of possibilities, whereas essay questions require students to compose their own answer. However, requiring students to compose a response is not the only characteristic of an effective essay question. There are assessment items other than essay questions that require students to construct responses (e.g., short answer, fill in the blank). Essay questions are different from these other constructed response items because they require more systematic and in-depth thinking. An effective essay question will align with each of the four criteria given in Stalnaker's definition and provide students with an indication of the types of thinking and content to use in responding to the essay question.

WHAT IS AN ESSAY QUESTION?

7 To review the criteria for an effective essay question, evaluate Example A. Determine if it meets the criteria for an effective essay question. Then check to see if your evaluation is consistent with the explanation provided.

Example A

List the 7-step path to making "ethical decisions." List them in their correct progressive order.

Explanation

Example A does not meet the criteria for effective essay questions for the following reasons:

1. The question does not require students to use complete sentences or more than one

sentence. Students may respond to Example A by simply listing the name and number for each step.

2. Depending on where students learned the steps, all the responses they give to the

essay question may be identical. Students will basically repeat the 7-step path word for word. The question does not allow for original responses or response patterns.

3. Although the question does require a list of steps, it does not require systematic

and complex thinking about the ideas. While some essay questions may serve their purpose in requiring students to list certain ideas, the most effective essay questions require deep and original thinking. Effective essay questions elicit a depth of thought from students that can only be judged by someone with the appropriate experience and expertise in the content matter. Thus, content expertise is essential for both writing and grading essay questions. To gain a better understanding of the basic elements of an essay look at Example B. Again, determine whether the given example contains the basic elements of an essay question and then compare your answer with the explanation below the example.

WHAT IS AN ESSAY QUESTION?

8

Example B

Explain in what ways a person's failure to apply step 5 of the seven-step path for making ethical decisions will impact his or her ability to make ethical decisions.

Provide an example that illustrates this impact.

Explanation

Example B is an effective essay question. Not only do students need to compose a response, but they also need to write several sentences in order to provide an answer that sufficiently meets the demands of the given task. Moreover, the task given to students in the essay question is constructed in such a way that it allows for different responses and response patterns. Students can provide a wide variety of examples to illustrate the impact , and they can structure their response in various ways. They could give the example first and then provide an explanation, or they could state the impact first and then provide an example. Students could also go back and forth between their explanation and their example as they write their response. They could look at the interaction between step 5 and other steps of the seven-step path in various ways. For example, one student might focus on the interaction between step 5 and step 4 and another student might focus on the interaction between step 5 and step 6. Hence, the task allows for original responses and response patterns. Because of the variety of possible answers, a competent specialist in the seven-step path for making ethical decisions must judge the accuracy and quality of the student responses. The grader must have a good understanding of the model to judge the accuracy, quality, and relevance of students' explanations and examples. This closer look at Example B shows that it contains the basic elements of an effective essay question.

Review: What is an Essay Question?

An essay question is a test item which contains the following elements:

1. Requires examinees to compose rather than select their response.

2. Elicits student responses that must consist of more than one sentence.

3. Allows original responses and response patterns.

4. Requires subjective judgment by a competent specialist to judge the

1. accuracy and quality of student responses.

2. 5. Provides students with an indication of the types of thinking and content to

3. use in responding to the essay question.

WHAT IS AN ESSAY QUESTION?

9

Review Exercise: What is an Essay Question?

For each of the following essay questions, decide whether it matches the definition given for effective essay questions. Mark "Yes" if the essay question matches the definition and "No" if it does not match the definition. If the question does not match the definition for an effective essay question, reconstruct the question in such a way that it matches and write your answer in the space below the original question. Check your answers with the answers in the Appendix A (p. 42).

Yes No

Essay question

1. Restate the definition for 'opportunity cost' that was provided in class.

Improved

essay question:

2. Should Olympic games ever be cancelled because of the threats of

terrorist attacks?

Improved

essay question:

3. What are the 3 basic steps of photosynthesis?

Improved

essay question:

4. Compare and contrast descriptive research and empirical research?

Improved

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